Author Archive | Sheldon Birnie

What a week for news, eh people? But amid all the scandal swirling around city hall in Toronto and the Senate in Ottawa, it’s important to remember that Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz is also a terrible public official worthy of getting the boot.

Winnipeg is a river city. Founded many moons ago where the Red and the Assiniboine Rivers meet, the prairie city has relied on its waterways for a variety of things over the years — from transportation to recreation, drinking water (sick, right?) to effluent removal. But perhaps the single most enthusiastically embraced purpose of the mighty Assiniboine has been as a receptacle for trash.

The City of Winnipeg recently unveiled a controversial plan to turn what is currently an underpopulated section of downtown into a residential neighbourhood. In a bid to fill empty condos and spur development of new ones in the heritage Exchange District, the city plans to fork over $10,000 cheques to anyone who buys a condo in the area and commits to living there for at least five years.

Canadians of all shapes and sizes celebrated our nation’s 146th anniversary yesterday. In typical local fashion, many Winnipeggers chose to do so with extreme inebriation and bizarre outbursts of reckless violence.

According to the Dawson Creek Daily News, “a video depicting what appears to be a deer set on fire and dragged behind a car is being shown on a Dawson Creek social media site.” The wildest part about this story is that this is only the most recent incident of disturbing animal cruelty to hit the national news from the small town.

While the bulk of Canadian political coverage in the last week has been split between drug dealing in Toronto and corrupt senators in Ottawa, Winnipeg’s mayor is doing his darndest not to be left in the dust.